Summary:
ZIP 46323 in Hammond, Indiana contains five schools serving 3,680 students: two elementary schools (grades PK–6), one middle school (7–8), and two high schools (9–12). Four of the five — Morton Senior High School, Warren G Harding Elementary School, Charles N Scott Middle School, and Joseph Hess Elementary School — belong to School City of Hammond, a district ranked 351st of 374 in Indiana. The fifth, Excel Center - Hammond, is its own district and enrolls 205 students. Every school here ranks in the bottom fifth of Indiana schools statewide.
Warren G Harding Elementary is the clear standout, beating its own district in every subject in both years reported: ELA 21.75% vs. 14.83%, math 26.95% vs. 13.16%, and science 23.74% vs. 15.52%, with 5th grade ELA at 35.51% and 4th grade math at 37.11%. Charles N Scott Middle holds the ZIP's strongest single result — Biology proficiency of 57.69% in 2024-25, above the state's 45.6%, compared with a district rate of just 13.69% in 2025-26 — even though it scores only 5–8% in middle school math. Joseph Hess Elementary is the laggard, ranking in the 8th percentile in each of the last two years, with 6th grade math at 2.63% against a state rate of 40.2% and the ZIP's highest Hammond-school absenteeism at 33.5%.
Excel Center - Hammond follows a different model entirely: 98.8% chronic absenteeism, an 8.8% graduation rate, 7.8% free/reduced lunch, a 34.1:1 student-teacher ratio, and $4,789 per-pupil spending — figures typical of a credit-recovery program rather than a comprehensive high school, so they should not be compared directly with Morton's 76.0% graduation rate. The ZIP's most urgent concern is high school math: Morton's SAT Math was 1.68% and 2.94%, and Excel's was 0%. District math also falls from about 24% in 4th grade to roughly 4–5% by 7th and 8th grade, and chronic absenteeism exceeds the state's 16.7% at every school.
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